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By Carolyn O'Hara

At the start of every New Year, we all hear about friends and colleagues who've decided to go on one diet or another in an attempt to atone for too much indulging during the holidays.

But while most of them are eliminating carbs or swapping juicing recipes, others may be trying out a regimen designed to give their bank accounts a boost: the all-cash diet.

Instead of counting calories, this diet requires setting aside your credit cards and only relying on old-fashioned cash to cover day-to-day expenses. By limiting your spending to just what’s in your wallet, goes the theory, you’ll be more likely to stick to a budget—and less likely to make impulse purchases with plastic. In other words, you’ll buy only what you need and less of what you simply want.

And it can be a winning strategy.

According to the Federal Reserve, the average American household owes more than $15,000 in credit card debt. But people who have switched to all-cash lifestyles for a time say that forcing themselves to live only on what’s in their wallets increases their ability to pay down debt—and live within their means.

Since we're deep into New Year dieting season, LearnVest scoured the country and found three all-cash dieters who were willing to share their stories of how they went from being buried under debt to flush with cash.

"I cash-dieted ... and paid down over $100K of debt."

In 2005, Adrian Johnson was tired of juggling debt payments that were overwhelming the teacher's life. Between the mortgage on his Arlington, Texas, house, student loans, credit card debt and payments on a motorcycle, Johnson owed about $125,000.

“I decided that enough was enough,” says Johnson, 36. “I was working for everyone but Adrian, and getting poorer while all of my creditors were getting richer. I was tired of being broke.”

So Johnson made a bold move: He cut up his credit cards and switched to an all-cash lifestyle using the envelope system, made popular by financial motivational speaker Dave Ramsey. The idea is to budget a set amount of cash for monthly expenses and then divvy up the money into various envelopes earmarked for food, gas, clothing and entertainment. Once an envelope is empty, there's no more money for that expense until the next month.

Johnson figured that if he sacrificed a lot for a short amount of time, he could pay off his debts faster. “I used to give myself $10 a week [for discretionary spending] for things like a video rental,” he says. “And that was it. But I was content because I knew my goal.”

To supplement his teacher’s salary, Johnson tutored students after school and on weekends. He also received a student loan repayment grant for becoming a certified teacher, allowing him to kick his debt repayments into high gear.

After two years of sticking to his all-cash diet, Johnson had repaid about $35,000 in credit card and student loan debt. “On my birthday that year, I wrote my last check for my student loans. It felt so good to get the bank off my back.”

Around this time, he also married his wife, Quaneshala, 35, who didn’t need much convincing on the merits of a no-credit lifestyle. “My parents lived paycheck to paycheck,” she says. “I knew that wasn’t the lifestyle that I wanted to live, so as a child I would save. I never wanted to be in debt or owe anyone anything.”